Life Experienced Fully

Ida Maria dedicated the show to the passengers and crew of Flight 1549, who so miraculously came away mostly unscathed after the emergency landing in the Hudson River. (I particularly like the quote at the end of the NY Times article "The pilot must have been both talented and charmed.”)For the show to have taken place on this day and her acknowledging the fact, made an otherwise short but fantastic show, something even more memorable. It did bring up some memories of seeing Travis so shortly after 9/11 (all others had canceled and rescheduled) and them acknowledging that this was probably the first time most of has had been out and in a crowd since that day - among many other thoughtful remarks in-between songs. It's a tremendous memory.

But that was a different experience, of course, in a very different time. Yesterday became all about the bright side even in the dark times and the joy and surviving and life experienced fully. So here then for the Queen of Fun, "Queen of The World" by Ida Maria.

musicsnobbery.com has an accurate review and pictures of last night's show (only leaving out the oddly corporate-looking audience - is there some marketing tie-in I'm missing?). Also Ida Maria is playing again tonight at Union Hall.

This very limited-run calendar is not for sale! Instead, I would like to gift it to the first 5 people who pledge their support for my work through Patreon - and to the kind people who are already Patreon supporters. Deadline: January 7th, 2017.

All you have to do is pledge your support on my Patreon page: Patreon.com/LuciWest (for as low as $1 a month). You can cancel anytime. By being a patron you will get other early and even exclusive content and gifts...

If you're already supporting my work through Patreon, just send me a message that you'd like a calendar. If you're one of the first 5 people to respond, I'll send one your way.

The Moving Postcard World Travel Map is not just any kind of map, it's a world scratch-off map... that my dear friendJudith Hecktorgave me earlier this year. I had been waiting for just the right time to shoot a time-lapse video for you to show you all the countries where I've shot Moving Postcard videos in chronological order...

As you see when watching the video, it's not just a time-lapse video of me scratching off the countries and flags on the world travel map, but also a quick glimpse of a video from each of the 11 countries I visited (or lived in) during the 6 1/2 years of publishing Moving Postcard videos every week.
If you would like to see more 1-minute videos from these 11 countries, please check out the respective collections:Germany,Spain,USA,Czech Republic,Portugal,Thailand,United Kingdom,Brazil,Poland,Mexico, andCuba.
Thank you so much, Judith, for this awesome map. You sure know how to find amazing and meaningf…

There's nothing quite like a German Christmas Market (Weihnachtsmarkt).
And the Hamburg Christmas Market is probably my favorite. It's the
Weihnachtsmarkt of my childhood and probably the only one that serves
Fischbrötchen (fish on a roll).

This video of the Hamburg Christmas Market, I filmed last week at two
different markets that are near each other: the Weisser Zauber at
Jungfernstieg (on the Alster River) and the Hamburger Weihnachtsmarkt at
the Rathausmarkt (city hall square). I filmed this video before the attack on the Berlin Christmas Market.

For
several days, I contemplated if I should publish this video at all - in
the aftermath of such a tragedy. Then it became obvious: of course, I
would publish a German Christmas Market video this week! As a matter of
fact, by now I feel lucky that I had filmed such a video during my trip
back home to Germany so I could take a stand this week. It's very
importa…

The Hotel Nacional de Cuba and the Plaza de la Revolución are two of the
main sights worth visiting in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana, Cuba.
In Vedado, you will also find the Cristóbal Colón Cemetery (check out my
video "Cristóbal Colón Cemetery, Havana (Cuba) – In Another Minute (317)") and the Afro-Cuban mecca of street art and culture Callejón de Hamel, which I might feature in another video...

In this week's video, I'd like to take you on a bit of a visual tour
of history. We start at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba (built in 1930),
drive a Cuban classic car taxi past a mural depicting the travel of the Granma yacht
(that brought the revolutionaries, including the Castro brothers,
Guevara and Cienfuegos, to Cuba in 1956 to overthrow the Batista regime)
and end at the Plaza de la Revolución, completed in 1959, the year
Fidel Castro came to power.